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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26804992">In the Margins</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightmist/pseuds/Nightmist'>Nightmist</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Errata, Marginalia, Palimpsest [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Final Fantasy XIV</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Introspection, M/M, Misunderstandings, Multi, One-Sided Relationship, Pining, Romance, Tumblr: FFXIVwrite2020</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 08:14:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>20,328</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26804992</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightmist/pseuds/Nightmist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>An organized collection of my fills from FFXIVWrites2020, focused variously looking at my WoL and her relationships, friendly or romantic or otherwise. Digging my teeth into some random meaty bits of the world.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aymeric de Borel/Estinien Wyrmblood, Aymeric de Borel/Warrior of Light, Aymeric de Borel/Warrior of Light/Estinien Wyrmblood, G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch/Warrior of Light, Warrior of Light/Estinien Wyrmblood, Warrior of Light/Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Errata, Marginalia, Palimpsest [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1666165</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Emet-Selch's Wholesomely Debauched Bookclub FFXIV-Writes 2020 Collection</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Table of Contents</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For the sake of clarity, rather than presenting my FFXIVWrites fills in the order they were received, I’ve chosen to collate them by perspective and theme. Rather than attempting to recall and organize every note and commentary I wish to make at the top or the bottom, I shall concede to the conceit of having included them inline; I hope this will not be too confusing. </p>
<p>Particular thanks for patience with my angst and helping generate ideas this month to Shoutz, Rosamynal, Semilune, TheSparklingOne, and RedWyvern. Almost certainly more too that slip my mind at the moment, basically the entire <a href="https://discord.gg/enabling-debauched-xivfic">Bookclub</a>.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><strong><em>1: G’raha Tia</em></strong>: Spoilers through 5.3, angsty, explicit (G’raha/f!WoL, f!WoL/f!WoL). <em>Prompts Clamour, Part, Lush, Panglossian, When Pigs Fly.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong><em>2: Estinien</em></strong><em>:</em> Angsty bits Prompts <em>Irenic, Tooth and Nail, Matter of Fact.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong><em>3: Aymeric:</em></strong> Some more angst here oops I like angst. Prompts <em>Foibles, Sway, Ache, Wish, Avail.</em></p>
<p>
  <strong>
    
  </strong>
</p>
<p><strong><em>4: Kohanya (f!WoL)</em></strong> Sillines and angst both, what can I say. Explicit in terms of at least talking about sex and sex toys. Prompts <em>Clinch, Lucubration, Ultracrepidarian, Shuffle, Paternal, Muster, Nonagenarian, Crux, Where the Heart Is.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong><em> 5: </em></strong><strong><em>Ardbert: </em></strong>Beautiful and sad, I hope, just as he is. Prompts <em>Fade, Splinter.</em></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. G'raha Tia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This was not a character I had written at all before and I wasn’t even sure <i>what</i> my stance on him, much less my WoL’s, was precisely before I began doing this project. As you will see, it came out rather clearly. I must caution for crunch ahead; there is a great deal of one-sided pining amongst this set of fills. I have become rather more fond of the catboy than this arc suggests and there will eventually be a happier outcome for him in my work... It's just not going to be with Kohanya.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong> <em>Prompt: Clamour</em> </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>My first attempt at this voice, but it did click quite a few things in place. Can be reasonably assumed to be ‘canon’ for my fics, as in this or something close enough to it to be of no significant consequence did occur.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The notion that he will be merely an <em>observer</em> collapses all too quickly once they enter the Labyrinth proper. Oh, he said he would hang back and take notes for the expedition, but the when the clamour of angry creatures chittering rises on the cohort of adventurers and their Scion-borrowed hero entering the first chamber to the west, to reveal a swarm of elementals and voidsent, he's not going to stand back and do <em>nothing</em>. G'raha Tia is a man, not marble, and he'll be damned if he's going to just watch when he could help, especially with something this <em>exciting</em>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The sounds are chaotic and raucous; angry wails, grunts and moans and pain, the high keening of an elemental before it is dissolved once more back into constituent aether. The air tastes of dust and stale water, with an increasingly coppery edge, and strangely, the occasional weak waft like fresh-ground cinnamon. Smoke and chilled ozone eddy in the air stirred by whistling arrows and running forms, but he can trace that to their party's black mage, long-fingered hands throwing balls of fire and shards of sharpened ice.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A sudden, strangely muffled and meaty thud, and G'raha finds himself sinking to his knees, a spike of pain radiating out from a spot at the side of his skull. Through sheer force of will, he manages not to drop his bow, lifting his draw hand to try and stop a rapidly increasing trickle of blood from his scalp. A blow to the head.  Faintly, the Seeker groans, feeling increasingly dizzy, pulse pounding against the bone.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Something sounds in counterpoint, the rhythm wrong, too rushed, slightly uneven. A person kneels down beside him and gentle hands reach, cupping around his head, just below the ears, before aether slides into him as if he had stepped naked beneath the waterfall just past a glacier, so cold it burns, so hot it chills, prickling and soothing and filling his mouth with more of that fresh cinnamon.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Blinking in blurred shock, his eyes lift and meet those of the healer, mispaired green and Allagan Red to a hue like fully ripened summer cherries, a red so rich you can taste the fruit. Or maybe that's the words that accompany them, as the woman spits, tart and sweet all at once, "If you have the skill to dart around and make games amongst the Ixali and Dullahan, G'raha Tia, you are more than capable of helping fight these creatures. Stay closer so I do not have to come running to your aid next time."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Kohanya Chelewae. The Scion. He'd half let himself forget she was a healer, after watching her tear into the aforenamed beasts with spell and curse and, on one memorable occasion, literally smacking an Ixali straight in the beak with her codex when it got too close. He had been quietly impressed then, even if she had not had the <em>best</em> possible attitude about his attempt to have a little fun.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Now, his eyes linger on her lips as he staggers back to his feet, the pain rapidly becoming memory. As he ponders on the shape of her mouth, something stirs in his blood, a surge of genuine <em>interest</em>. What color is that that she paints them?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Something with flowers. As he jogs to catch up with the others, the miqo'te lad muses to himself, considering possibilities, each name accompanied in his mind by a professor's droning tone.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lavender (is used to imply serenity, grace, devotion and purity… and silence). No.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Heliotrope (denotates feelings of eternal love). Hardly, that seems a bit much.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Iris (is the flower of both royalty and wisdom). Well, she might be wise, but no.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A pause as he wracks his mind, then a memory, of when he was caught gazing out the windows of a classroom on an early spring day, just past the frosts, as the heads of soft purple lilac flowers swayed in the wind, carrying their perfume within the buildings and making them all wish to be out and free to roam.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>And what do the flowers so enamoring you represent, Master Tia?</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The beginning of love.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Chasing after the backs of the adventurers until he catches up, falling in with jibes and good-natured joking, G'raha smiles as much to himself as to anyone else.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Her lips are the color of blooming lilacs.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong> <em>Prompt: Part</em> </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>I spent a great deal of time pondering what exactly G’raha and Kohanya’s relationship was; the conclusion came out to that while <em>he</em> was definitely in love, she was friendly… and at a point in her self-journey where she didn’t really have the best tools to understand that the two were different.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>G'raha Tia could feel the doors of time, already starting to close around him as they ascended the tower. He knew, deep within where his pulse rode his veins, that in the most literal of ways, there was no time: act now or accept that the bloom of lilacs must be left to wilt on the branch.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They may well wilt regardless. Yet selfish as it is, as the tower pulls on him and draws him away from the life and world he had dreamed of, he wants all the more to grasp one last thing for himself.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He still doesn't know how she truly feels; breaching such a topic would be hard enough when not surrounded by others. It doesn't help that she has some small handful of years on him, an inward turn to her mien and a graceful fluidity in her responses that provides a serene counterpoint to his own energy. She compels him but, if he is honest, she also <em>intimidate</em>s him. He has enjoyed these evenings amongst crystal, the light reflecting blue and teal across her features, black cherry eyes locked to his face. For someone without a Sharlayan education, the depth of her knowledge is not insignificant, and her arcanist education is supplemented by an uncanny instinct for all matters aetherical. The discussions have been stimulating, in more senses than one. Enough that she smiles when she sees him now, light and fleeting, making her shine like moonglow.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It must be enough warm regard for him to be brave, because while he longs for more, for the sensation of touch, she is still waters and he has no notion how to draw them to flow as he wishes. There is no <em>time</em>, time and the sand trickling in the hourglass. Perhaps that was the true nature of the aethersand that started this all, his teasing and games, something supposedly precious reduced to no more than a wind-scattered handful of seconds he might have in her presence.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>So he lies. Not a big lie or a cruel one, the simple sort he had heard other students use time and again. Possibly had used a time or two before. "Ah, I think I have a book with more information on that among my bags. If you would like, we could go retrieve it, perhaps share a cup of tea?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Kohanya stares with those deep, large eyes, a little too long, enough that he thinks she knows. He is not sure what impulse drives him, but reaching, G'raha rests a hand on her arm, adding in a less assured tone, suspecting that the true pleading is all too clear in his voice, "Please?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Whether she knows his intent or not he cannot read, but she nods and follows him all the same. When the tent-flaps fall shut behind them, and she fastens them neatly, he watches, settling on the edge of his cot and reaching for a bag. A slim-fingered hand falls atop his and he looks up, trying not to stare at the gaping opening her posture makes of the neckline of her relaxed tunic. A soft laugh falls from her lips and she smiles faintly, a gentle expression. "G'raha. Is there really a book?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sheepish, he shakes his head, dares to reach and twine fingers around her waist, pull her close to breathe in the scent of her, cinnamon and a faint hint of floral soap. "No. It was purely a lure. But you came, so perhaps, you are not so averse to the notion of being lured…" He cannot bring himself to ask bluntly, but he is sure she knows, when fingertips brush his neck, trace the shape of his tattoo. With a slight growl, he <em>pulls</em>, dragging her down to kneel astride his lap, her plain skirt a tangled shield around her legs.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Shifting one hand from the narrowing column of waist to the back of her neck, he grips firmly at the nape as he drags her down to kiss like he has wanted to. Her mouth tastes of cinnamon and the bitter herbs from her earlier tea and it is all too right; spice and regret, to taste the one to chase away the second. Or to chase it into her, perhaps, when he leaves, but even as a corner of his mind chants, <em>selfish, selfish, selfish</em>, he will not let go, will not forego a chance at a sweet dream to guide him to sleep.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She is softer and more accommodating then the few women of his clan he had dallied with in more indiscreet days, letting him guide the kiss, guide her to press and arc to him, his hands sliding along linen and beneath, drawing the shape of Allagan runes onto her skin, his name and promises. If he could make her his, truly mark her, oh, he would, he would lay a blazing stamp of claim, scrape with nails, bite down on the nape where his hand is. Yet that would be asking too much for a first joining, so instead, he takes her compliance and warmth, praises it, rewards it with further touches.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>More kisses, until their breath is fast and mingled, a glide of hand to find the giving weight of a breast. He strokes soft skin, drags thumb over nipples until they pebble and tent out her tunic, until she is gasping, soft and sweet in his ears. A flutter of lips along jaw, neck, reminding himself in every moment, <em>don't mark, you can't mark, you must take only this and no more</em>, and it stings to leave skin unmarred and like clean linen but he is strong enough, he swears, as he drags her tunic overhead, tossing his after so they can align, warm flesh to flesh, the sun at dawn and the moon at twilight.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hands are followed by lips, sampling bared skin, the flicker of tongue to draw the faint trace of sweat and salt, learn how he can make her breath flicker and her voice like broken crystals scattered across the cream of her skin. The curved edge of delicate fingers dig into his shoulders and the muscles of his arms, leaving tiny moons to remember her by. Even if he is trying not to openly lay a claim on her, she is laying hers on him, unaware. There are so many things he desires, but he will settle for her soft mewls as he pulls her down to grind against him, mouthing wet kisses along her collarbone even as he works hips against her through pants and smalls and skirt.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The timbre of a growl makes his voice lower, and G'raha allows himself the indulgence of one brief bite, leaving soft pink indents that will fade by morning, "I want you bare and under me." Dark lashes flutter against her cheek, feathery over eyes lightly hazed from pleasure, and again, lips like lilac blossoms curl into that sweet, oh so accommodating smile.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She slips from his grip and shimmies loose of what garb remains, even as he does the same. The sight of her, half-turned demurely, tail brushing her legs and hair falling about her shoulders, is enough to make impulse impossible to resist. Dragging her closer, he presses her to him, open mouth to mouth, rolls her under him, pins hips with his, until he can feel the slick press of wet folds against the aching heat of his own arousal. Awkward, eager, he circles slowly, lets his shaft grind and drag over her sex, bumping against her pearl.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She gasps and makes a tremulous arch, back bowing into a lovely line beneath him. Wanting to imprint it into his memories, his dreams, he watches her as he does it again, the open fall of her lips, the creases pleasure draws between her eyes. Another slow roll and he finds himself slipping in her honey, the head of him grazing her opening. Impatient again, he guides her, pulls up at knees til her legs lock around his waist, ankles crossing at the small of his back, hips lifted off the cot. Shifting, with one hand, he angles himself, aligns…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Slow as the tide and as inexorable, he presses within, savoring every minute second, every moment. She will not know yet, but he does, and if he is only to have this once, to take <em>her</em> once, he intends to <em>remember</em> every instant. Sheathed in full a moment, he hangs his head, fiery russet locks swaying in the edge of his vision, committing to the deepest knowledge the feel of being fully grasped in the silken wet heat of her body, every quiver of muscle she makes around him, every rasped whimper as he starts to move, slow, steady.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As much as he can against the grains of sand as they rush from bulb to bulb, G'raha Tia takes his time of her. He brackets hands around her hips, pulls her to him, presses deeper, angles her beneath him so every deep, demanding stroke presses to a spot within that makes her shudder and shake the weak legs of the cot. When he can focus past the bliss of conjoinment, he steals kisses from her, fleeting pecks and more rarely, deep and delving, tongue chasing the true taste of her. More are laid across her forehead, neck, shoulders, petals of devotion strewn before an idol.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A sudden startled gasp as he drives in again and something in her shatters, Kohanya suddenly quavering and gripping down around him, even hotter in the seconds as she climaxes. A massive surge of satisfaction, smug and grasping, knowing that he gave her pleasure, makes him finally speed up as his lust has desired all along. As his own peak nears he watches her head lolling distractedly in aftermath, lips still gently parted and her face soft, the dark strands of her hair making a field of flowers of his pillow. When he can still see it when he closes his eyes, painted on the back of the lids, he slips the leash of his control, slamming into her so she makes a weak, trembling sound with each thrust, until he feels the spring unwind within and heat radiates out through him as he spills deep within.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A few seconds to recover and he pulls back, gasping, face flushed now as the full realization of what has happened sinks in. He knows that heritage will bind him all too soon and let himself grasp, greedy and covetous, anyway. A cruelty. The earlier litany returns, <em>selfish, selfish, selfish</em>. Not daring to meet her gaze, he reaches for discarded smalls, half-pulled back up his legs before he remembers to grab a handkerchief and clean himself.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A moment later, mortified, he fishes a second cloth from a bag and offers it to her, her face equally red with embarrassment as she dabs between her legs, then holds the fabric in place as she shifts, catching any leakage as she reaches for her clothes as well. For a second, the dark pools of her gaze search his face, probing for answers. "You seem… regretful? Was I that…"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Catching the path of her thoughts, G'raha grimaces, pushes past his miserable focus on his own failures and reaches to take hands in his. Right now, he needs to assure her that any mistake here was his own, not hers. "No. You were — you are — lovely. No regrets, I am just… morose after. A personal flaw." He attempts one of his usual bright smiles, squeezes her hands. "No reflection on you at all."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He dares not speak the whole truth. It was divine, merely to have her. That he <em>felt</em> things, wanted more than just the juxtaposition of bodies, wants to sleep with her in his arms, to drag her mouth to his once more, to spend hours, days, weeks in her presence. That he should not have dared to take even what he did. Better for her to wonder and doubt and have some question, so when the inevitable parting comes, perhaps, she will properly lay blame on him, instead of herself.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong> <em>Prompt: Lush</em> </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>I gotta be honest, I mostly wanted to abuse both the imagery of a pearl against lush greenery and the concept of lush curves being attractive here, while being lazy about how descriptive I had to be about the sex. So of course there’s the Exarch, being up to exactly what you’d think he’d be up to with his mirror.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Once, a very long time ago, he had been an impulsive young man. To survive, for hope to survive, he has stopped being all those things. In a gentler world, he supposes, being young might have disappeared first, but when G'raha Tia awoke it was into a world where impulse tended to end in a short, bloody conclusion. Impulsive he had been, yes, but also clever. So with the help of those who had woken him, he learned to wait. He learned to plan. He learned patience and patience and more patience, to wait for results he may never see.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And in the learning, age did away with youth, even before he came to the First and merged with his charge as he has. That took care of the final component as well; what right does he still have, to claim to be a man? The crystal creeps to consume him, a century in, and he could live for more, but someday, someday, he will be naught be stone and metal.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And yet.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Parts of him are still flesh and blood and <em>feeling</em>, intense and burning as brilliant bloody as the sun merging to the horizon, the final end in sight. A wave of his hand, and the viewer awakens with a dawning glow, casting cool highlights on everything. In years past, he used this to watch Lyna when he worried.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He has no hope of claiming that this worrying is of the same familial variety. Warriors two, but he watched only one to ensure rest and safety, when he could. If it were asked of him, the Exarch might claim, smooth and calm and clear as the crystal that made one of his hands, that he merely bore concerns, perhaps if pressed hard a trace of guilt, for the one who was chosen to bear the release of the Lightwardens. G'raha Tia, sealed away in his mind like his cowl pressed his ears to nothingness, like his robes obfuscated the glimpse of a tail, would whisper inside, that he watched the one he <em>knew</em>, the woman of lilac and irises, who had once laughed at his jokes, despite her resistance, and started to smile at the sight of him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The lamps still glow in her room, needed once again now, and she sits at the table, writing into her codex. Here, he can see what she hides among others. The faint lines of strain betwixt her brows. The pained hunch of increasingly bony shoulders. And most concerningly, what he had spotted earlier beneath the brilliant but honest sun: a patch of hair nearly to her nape, bleached from regal iris to first breath of spring lilac.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The light was starting to warp her.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A flicker in the periphery of his portal, and the door swings open. He can only see, not hear, the drahn — no, au ra — woman who steps within, dark horns and scales and all pink and red between. The second warrior.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Her hues ever remind him of exposed flesh and blood; it makes him uncomfortable, especially with her antagonism towards him. On their arrival, as expected, Kohanya had been tart and biting over the costs and risks of how he had called for them (for her), but the gentle side beneath it that he remembered well had won over and she either had forgiven him or done a good job giving the appearance of it. G'raha turns over in his mind, looks at him with the mismatched eyes of memory, and he thinks, no, she merely is weary with resentment. I remember what true happiness looked like on her and you have never, never seen it here.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Dragging his focus from self-flagellation to femininity, both parts of him flush and he wonders what he has missed. Atara stands over Kohanya, both hands cupped around her face, kissing her deeply while darkness bubbles out of the ground around them, forming a translucent dome. Embarrassed, his eyes skate away, then come back. He is merely making sure the exposure to… to a dark knight's powers when she holds the light, when part of why she had to do so is because she is not linked to the dark aether, is not going to make her worse.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The ability to pretend the rapid rise and fall of her chest is from distress disappears as the other woman starts to peel open the layers of Kohanya's robes, baring skin like the moon where it is not flushing to match the pink of her partner. Lust lances through him, then guilt, but oh, not strong enough to defeat the searing spread of desire. He lowers his gaze a little, but not enough to lose sight of the vision of her leaning back against the table, folds of her dark garb falling open around her like a pearl dropped amidst the leaves of the verdant lushness of the forests of Rak'tika.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He presses the still mortal hand to his face, uses it to cover his mouth, in theory to muffle any sound he might make in response, in truth because if it is at his <em>lips</em> he is not placing it anywhere <em>else</em>. Atara's mouth is on Kohanya's neck, a hand slipping between parted thighs. He can't hear the gasp that must accompany the way the miqo'te woman's head falls back, lips parting, but memory provides a good estimation. He would rather have seen it up close, at his own hands, but that does not remove the allure, the fascination of seeing it from this new angle.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Nothing in him wants to look away now, through long moments, the lift and shudder of pale hips beneath a demanding hand, the way the two warriors tangle together beneath their shell of misty shadows, a tumble of royal iris petals, creamy jasmine, pink peony, the bloody hue of poppies. He knows the moment where the dark knight brings the trembling scholar to apex by how she shudders and slumps, gone limp and weary.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He has resisted the temptation to do anything uncouth, or at least, more uncouth than having watched them. (What he does later with his memories, he is not ready to be held accountable for.) Relieved that he still has this much strength, slowly, the Exarch lowers his hand, watching as Atara gathers Kohanya's exhausted form in her arms, carrying the smaller warrior over to her bed and finishing shucking her clothes before tucking her within. As her head lolls, finding a spot on the pillow, her hair halos out around her, and he sees something.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The streak of lilac has deepened, not fully back to the deep inky iris, almost black, but the middling hue of salvia blossoms, the flower of healing.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong> <em>Prompt: Panglossian</em> </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Yes, I’m that person who takes the prompt about being optimistic beyond reason and uses it to shatter someone’s dreams like a glass ornament flung at a wall. What can I say, my mind is both honest and unkind, and sometimes, it’s more interesting to watch two people who mean well but utterly fail to understand one another.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>It had all seemed to go as well as he could ever have dreamed, although he had, of course dreamed of the best possible outcome. We are all prone to impossible optimism in our heads. Still, amongst his priorities, he had achieved them all.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>She</em> had survived.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Norvandt had survived.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lyna had survived.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Crystarium had survived.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Impossibly, <em>he</em> has survived as well.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>After all that, it seemed like he may as well believe the most impossible seeming thing could happen. Amongst the celebrations, G’raha realizes that she has slipped off and away from the others. Not a surprise, both that she would and that she could; most of the people here would think first of the other Warrior of Darkness, who wielded that power literally, who swept away sin eaters with physical might, red and black aether, and a fearless gaze. Oh, they knew that Kohanya was one as well, but her role to their eyes was smaller, supportive, magic not even particularly flashy.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Because none of them could recognize her slowly growing bloated and crackling with light, until she was hanging against being a monster by the slimmest nail, scraped towards it ilm by ilm, beautiful as the blade her existence became, held to their necks. He could, though, had to watch her aether being scoured into something monstrous. She seemed to prefer the lack of awareness, too, which he struggled to understand. When he had first known her, she had no fear of being seen as a hero. The chronicles he had found from Ishgard’s ruins certainly painted her as one, tales of facing down dragons even greater than those the Allagans controlled. The records and tales had shifted their focus after that, but he had been sure, so sure. Yet when she came here, she preferred to fade away, stand back in other’s eyes. He still didn’t know why, when she still steps up, rarely questioning, to whatever challenge they put to her.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But he distracts himself. This is his territory, his home, and he can feel the traces of her aether, largely returned to normal, laying over the ground, luring him on like honeysuckle and spice on a hot summer breeze.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He finds her outside on one of the upper balconies, leaning against the railing, black cherry eyes on the inky interstellar medium, the brilliant sparkle of stars in a range of pale hues. Out here in the dark, her hair is again almost as dark, the few lingering mismatched streaks disguised. As are the aberrations on her skin, with her high-necked gown and long sleeves, covered from neck to toe. Grinning brilliantly, he moves to lean beside her, hand resting just so it brushes against the other miqo’te’s as he greets her, “You have achieved something truly miraculous. A hero unmatched in our history.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Kohanya’s eyes turn to him, and they are colder than he had expected, and weary. No pride or joy at her success. “I only did what I had to to be able to go home, G’raha, you should understand that notion.” There is a low hiss to her voice, especially at his name, and the Exarch gazes back, as wounded as if his own eyes truly were of blood.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Uncertain, he reaches to take her hand in his still of mortal flesh and bone, interlace fingers tightly. “Kohanya? Of course, I wanted to go home someday, but I wanted to preserve you far more. There was no home without you.” Her skin is as warm as it was in his memories, a still surface and a racing torrent below.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Something cracks in her features and for the smallest moment he believes she is about to confess she returns his feelings and all will be as perfect as he could ever have dreamed. Then sorrow descends across her like a widow’s veil, darkening her hues. “G’raha. You were my <em>friend</em>, not my beloved. We never spoke of such things. I did not believe you had felt much more than friendly desire, given how easily you left to sleep forever.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>His ears flick back as he swears he hears a distant sound, like a glass dropped onto a stone floor. “I didn’t think we had to! You… We… That night together!” The halcyon memory that had sustained him, had replayed over and over in his head a thousand thousand times a day, until the colors were truer than life, the sounds deeper, until the sense of it and her had been charged into the fundamental atoms of his self, flesh or crystal. How could he possibly have misremembered it?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Kohanya’s eyelids drop, covering her eyes for a long moment. “G’raha… No. Yes, we had sex, because you were my friend and I thought you wanted to. I wanted you to be happy, for us to keep being friends, and I figured it was an easy way to do that. Then when it ended, you acted like you felt guilty and miserable for what happened.” She laughs, low and bitter. “Twelve! I wasn’t even sure you would still want to be my friend, I must have been so bad! Given that you locked yourself away not long after, it seemed likely it was no more than an embarrassing misread on my part. ”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Kohanya. My love, no, no, you were wonderful, I—” G’raha pulls her hand his chest, clutching it to his heart, as if through word and force of body he can convince her to understand how her memory, her history is <em>wrong</em>. “I felt bad for seducing you, knowing what I might have to do, to leave you.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She tugs at her hand, as if she wants to take it away, and he lets go as if burnt. “Yeah, that was pretty awful thing to do, although I am not sure I would call it a seduction. We were friends. I was trying to make my friend happy.” She takes a step back, and her expression holds the terrible gentleness of a goddess pronouncing judgement. “I am not in love with you and I never have been. I’m sorry, but I think you need to hear it clearly. You don’t really love me, either. You don’t even know who I am now, if you even did back then.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>More shards of glass, ground underfoot, wailing, and his ears are flat on his hair, his eyes wide. “I thought — Surely —” He stills and a series of horrifying realizations occurs. Mayhap he had created something more than what was really there in memory. Mayhap he truly had asked too much. Mayhap wanting everything and her heart too was a step too far. “No. I am sorry for my misunderstanding. I will give you your space.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He turns, crisply, and walks away, ignoring the soft sigh behind him, that is as much sorrow and regret as exhaustion. Or so he wants, even now, to believe.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong> <em>Prompt: When Pigs Fly</em> </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Oh, you said this can be about wanting something impossible? Oh, no, I can’t be that mean. … Can I? Yeah, no, I definitely can. I’m sorry G’raha but gosh I liked this one. Not that long but the atmosphere of it just, mm.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>Within the dim luminosity of ancient Allagan crystal, casting endless scintillating shadows in the depths of the translucent walls, G’raha Tia sleeps, secure in the heart of the tower.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Within his sleep, he dreams, of things made possible only through the twisting whims of pixies and porxies, dreams drawn from the filaments of reality and woven into what might have been, into the impossible.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>G’raha dreams of a world where he was truly bold. He dreams that he was brave enough to tell her <em>why</em> the night he drew her to his bed back in Mor Dhona. Told her then, ‘I am falling for you, your beauty and bravery and kindness, your determination and subtle tartness that accentuates your sweet nature. I may have to lose myself to win this fight and I want to be able to remember you, remember us together, so that if I face endless dreaming, I will meet you when you come for me in yours.’ In that world, perhaps, she would have understood, and instead of awkwardly all but shoving her from his tent in guilt and confusion, he would have drifted off, watching the rise and fall of her bared chest, black cherry eyes hidden behind lids with skin as luminously pale as the moon, woken to the tangle of aubergine strands mingled with his russet, the first and last hues of the sunset, brought together in one eternal whole.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In his sleep, G’raha Tia flings out a hand to find a bed cold and empty and his dreaming mind flickers onwards.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>G’raha dreams that his initial plan succeeded, despite the cost to himself. There is no Emet-Selch in his dreams, felling him face-first with a callous shot in the back. Here, he stands over her crouched and panting form as she keens with agony and he succeeds in pulling all the light forth and even as it takes him over and burns away his mortal flesh, here, he can see her gaze up at him, aching and relieved, tears of gratitude as the corruption leaves her for him. Here, he was a hero, he was able to be her savior, and if he goes to die in a void, it will be with the memory of her crying out his name pleadingly as he fades.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Red-ruffed ears twitch, turn, listening for the dulcet tones of her voice, listening for the quiet pulse of her heartbeat beside him. Nothing returns to him but the echo of his own breathing and he rolls over in his bed, wrapping arms and blankets tighter around himself.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A thousand possibilities flicker in his dreaming mind. Cream skin, soft looks, the fall of her hair against her cheek, whether iris petals or even when it was bleached lily white by the light. Thoughtful contemplation. The way that even with her anger, her disappointment, rightly earned, she came for him, to Amaurot, to face Emet-Selch even when she might die. The caress of a whisper against his ear, something still fond beneath the scolding. “As if I would not come to rescue you.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>If only she would. A sliver of an eye opens in the dimness, gazes out with blood-hued irises on his empty chambers. Another roll, this time onto his back, staring up at the crystal ceiling as if he could see the night sky beyond.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Porxies fly. Maybe… maybe if he can return the Scions, safely to the Source, she will forgive him and make room in her heart. Maybe not, and he must confess, in responsibility and kindness, he would work and give everything for it no matter what; he has asked so much of her and them and he will repay it. But that tiny seed still buried in the smallest chamber of his heart shifts, struggling to unfurl in hope once more, no matter how he ought to crush it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>G’raha Tia closes his eyes and wishes for simpler dreams.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Estinien Wyrmblood</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Usually one of my go to voices, he was surprisingly rare for fills this year. I still love him.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
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<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>Prompt: Irenic</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>I just am absolutely fascinated by the days when Aymeric and Estinien were Temple Knights together and as they rose through the ranks, yet I have not written on it hardly at all. Getting to dip my fingers into it a little made this one of my favorites to write, and I hope it conveyed the sense of this still being fairly early in their closeness but growing more so.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The voice of the knight over by the bar carries, his (extremely poor) imitation of a back-country peasant ringing off the walls of the Forgotten Knight. “And then I sed t’me ol’ mum, I’d rather be balls deep’n a karakul, like a p’oper country boy!”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>At their table in a dim back corner, Estinien’s hands ball into fists, a bottle of ale set down with a distinctly ominous clink. He is halfway to his feet before a restraining hand comes to lie atop his own, the warmth and weight of Aymeric’s touch — in public, despite all of his warnings and precautions and he has <em>told</em> the damn noble that if they are going to make risky choices, to at least not slip in front of the eyes of others. Rapidly dropping back into his chair with a rattle of chain, he jerks his hand back, although not before grabbing at his beer once more.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Aymeric seems blessedly uninsulted by his precipitous withdrawal from the touch, his friend’s lips curving into one of those slippery smooth politician’s smiles. “Estinien. You cannot continue to challenge every compatriot you hear be ignorant to a fight. If you wish to become Azure Dragoon, you can ill afford to have men you may command or who will work with those under your command actively resentful of you.” His gaze flickers to catch the dragoon’s, spearing him with a blue as damnably pure and powerful as the gaze of the Fury herself. Beneath the table, the restraining hand settles now on his knee, touch light even out of sight.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He should withdraw from that touch too, let Aymeric’s irenic heart be better kept within boundaries and rules. Yet in the depths of him, he is invariably weak to the pleadings and prayers of that velvet voice, to giving in to whatever ridiculous desire brings a smile to lips that belong on a statue or in a painting, not on mortal flesh. The train of his thought makes a brief hint of heat strain to appear on the apples of his cheeks, and Estinien takes a long swig from the bottle and sets it down again, hard, praying that the alcohol will explain any color that has seeped through. “If they are going to be working with me, maybe they should not be spreading idiotic and crude stereotypes.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A very gentle squeeze of that hand and Estinien must needs down damn near another third of the bottle in one go. This <em>understanding</em> between him and Aymeric, or whatever it was, is still too new and nerve-wracking, and finally, embarrassed, he reaches under and after briefly laying his hand atop the other knight’s and gripping it warm and tight in return, he lifts that elegant and moves it away. If only so his mind will return to working normally instead of longing for that touch in other places. There’s an all too aware gleam in the noble’s eyes as he counters, “If they are to do so when on patrol or at work, I would do naught but encourage you. However, controlling the minds, and more relevantly, the manners of every man and woman in Ishgard in their spare hours, is quite beyond the scope of any possible duties. You must learn when to let such things pass.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Scowling bitterly, Estinien downs the rest of the ale and shoves the bottle over petulantly, watching it spin a lazy circle on the table. After a moment, he huffs out a breath, then glances back towards the bar itself, where the boor has descended into holding hands in front of his hips and enthusiastically mock-pumping into what is no doubt meant to be some poor farm animal. Aymeric’s voice is soft but clear as he says, “He will get cut off soon enough. He is too drunk and making a scene. However, for the sake of your infamous temper, might I suggest that instead of a refill here, we retreat back to my home for a final nightcap?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This time, the grin is not a politician’s smooth one, but simultaneously boyish and shy, a chin lowered a little so more dark hair falls over Aymeric’s face, the disarray only highlighting his youthful seraphism. Swallowing down a brief impulse that has nothing to do with anger at all, Estinien surges to his feet, once again grateful for the habit of merely preceding to the tavern in their mail. “I might even be kind enough not to drink so much I try and serenade your saintly mother with shepherd’s lullabies again.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Aymeric laughs and rises as well, the firelight shining off his eyes and hair. “She found the tunes charming, if not your voice. At least I could appreciate both.” Snorting to cover an outburst of laughter, Estinien lightly shoves his companion’s shoulders and they head for the exit, soon caught up in friendly jibs and laughter.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
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<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>Prompt: Tooth and Nail</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Poor Estinien; they all have nightmares, but I can only imagine what it’s like after having been trapped in one by Nidhogg for so long. No wonder he has such dark circles under his eyes.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>Estinien Wyrmblood has always been plagued by nightmares. Even in the bucolic years of his youth, when the wheel of the seasons still turned in Coerthas, he woke many nights, sweat beading on his skin as his young mind conjured phantoms and tragedies fantastical. By the time Nidhogg broke his world, all it did was focus them and make them more intense, but he already knew how to wake still and quiet and panting, to shove the nightmare down and away and lie rigid ‘til his body succumbed to sleep despite the struggles of his mind. When the whole world broke and his life became an endless winter, well. Merely more fuel, ‘til oft, amidst dreams of fire and blood, swords and claws, dragon wings blackening the sky, he would merely wake, inhale deeply, and slip down into the sea of darkness once more most nights.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Oh, a few were worse, those when he dreamed of Nidhogg coming to steal what was left to his heart, to rend and tear and destroy what little he still dared to clutch close in his weakness. But those came rarely, at least, they did until the dragon consumed his form with his power. Then it was endless moons trapped within a nightmare, again and again, old and new, but most often, Nidhogg loved to show him his own form, in draconic fang and claw, in elezen tooth and nail, reaching for throats to tear them forth in arterial spray, show him the image of life's blood (<em>theirs but also his, oh, he did not want to live as it flowed out and coated him) </em>spilled like water.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Estinien sleeps very little, these days, runs himself perpetually ragged, just as he once would harangue and nag Aymeric for doing. What has long been occasional dark smudges beneath his eyes has become permanent dark hollows, shadowing his face with all the nighttime hours he gazes at, jaw clenched, unwilling and unable anymore to simply give in to sleep and face the memories, the dreams, the worst imaginings, once more. Even the comfort of another body beside him rarely keeps them fully away, but it makes some difference, the reassurance of a heavy hand laid on his waist or tangled into his hair, the grounding warmth of someone literally at his back, guarding him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(Never mind that the best comfort comes from those he is most likely to dream of hurting. To wake and turn his head, be able to listen for the steady cadence of Aymeric's somnolent breath, to know for an absolute fact the knight is here with him and well, is a reassurance past imagining. The same applies for his slitted eyes revealing the flick and twitch of Anya's ears as she dreams, or the feel of her tail twining around one of his legs in instinctive, unconscious affection.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The problem lies in those times the tooth of his torments snags deepest, draws nails to stretch to claws, leads to him grabbing for a lance or worse, a body, ready to strike and pierce and slice… Better, then, to keep himself far from others in the night, other than those allies he is sure that either he will recognize or that he trusts to hold him off. Not so far, but space enough always to give him time to step in and take control; he spent far too many nights in Garlemald, wrapped in furs alone on the far side of a camping fire, not wishing for sleep out of the fear he would lose his control around his new and uncertain allies.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>If pressed to honesty, cornered and trapped, he might admit: most of what he does now, fighting, traveling, all the work and effprt is meant mostly to find a way to a world where his dreams can finally be sweet again.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
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</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>Prompt: Matter of Fact</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>I am a minor tease and Estinien is far more of a worrywart than he likes to let on, shepherd boy grown up and just wanting to tend to his flock of two. At least he can fuss at Aymeric.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>Every scar and marking on her skin, she has been honest about.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Not proud, to recount the stories, not shy either, generally. Simple words, unadorned, matter of fact, calmly recited. Even the few lingering imprints of childhood mishap she is honest about, although she is prone to laughing at herself as if they were simply proof of her flaws. Never mind that both Estinien himself and Aymeric have told her that they see them as badges of honor; no one survives to adulthood without being marred by war in Ishgard.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Given that, the fact that she remains utterly insistent and flat about her lack of knowledge of the damned scar at her back is like a splinter under the skin of his mind. The line is long, almost enough to girdle her waist, and sunk into the surrounding skin, paler and with rough edges. He has seen scars with a similarities look on men who took a blow to the back from a dragon hard enough to damage the spine. None of them still walk.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>No matter how gifted a healer she is, for whatever happened to leave a mark like that, she should <em>know</em> about it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>With her gone away to the First again, chasing down some final Ascian specter, he has returned to Ishgard, to wait. (To keep Aymeric and himself a little steadier through the worrying, in truth, with one another to lean on, but saying that honestly and openly is still rather more than he would prefer to do.) So, it is not the case that he can harry her directly, not that doing so has ever done any good so far.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>So he fusses and whines (or he thinks of it as whining) to Aymeric about it regularly, because fixating on an old scar is easier on his heart than pondering her facing another deadly threat on another world, distant and untouchable, still so worn and wounded in body and soul. Helplessness is <em>not</em> a state of being that sits easily on Estinien's shoulders, and he has not quite realized how much he has fixated until the evening Aymeric comes home from the Congregation and shoves a sheaf of paper into his hands, dark circles under his own eyes from the long hours he has been working. "Here. Please do not ask how my people got their hands on this. I do not know and I am sure it involves behavior that is less than wise, even for a spy."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(Estinien <em>tries</em> to encourage him to take better care of himself, but they are too used to one another as independent. For all they cleave tightly together at home, years of working in parallel under their own hands is an extremely hard habit to shake. Thus, they fall too easily back into bad habits from too long acting as if they were not as bonded as they were.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Not sure what to expect but praying for some answer, the dragoon starts to flip through the paperwork, quickly recognizing the top sheets as a medical intake form for the Maelstrom. Aymeric is right; getting a hold of these sort of records, for one of the Warriors of Light, suggests some terrifyingly competent individual at work in Limsa. Unfortunately, what also becomes clear as he scans through the pages is that the Maelstrom has no more damned idea where the scar came from, and that she bore it when she joined them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lips curling in disgust, Estinien throws the brief folio down onto the table. "So, you went to all that trouble to calm my mind, only to confirm that if she does not know, no one else knows either." He scrapes a hand over his face, eyes closing in weariness.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A hand touches his shoulder and he paws at it, wrapping it tighter around him, willing at least here to, however silently, ask Aymeric for the comfort he needs. A darker head tips to press against his own silvered one, forehead to forehead, and for the span of a few breaths, they simply stand together, finding support and peace in familiar presence. Then the Lord Speaker's voice fills his ears, soft and resonant and full of quiet certainty and affection. "I did, because I can no more control the shape of reality than you can, beloved, but at least you know a little more." Lips curve into a slight smile, felt as they press against his cheek for a moment. "Find a new obsession to worry over and have faith. She has returned to us safely before and she will again, always."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>With a low, disgruntled sound, Estinien turns his head slightly, exchanging the brief kiss to a cheek with a more proper one of thanks, lingering a second or two. "Just tells me for sure it's from before she became a Warrior of Light. Probably in the years she cannot remember properly. Still. Thank you for trying." He leans in a bit more, not wanting to part from Aymeric's comforting presence. Not that he will stop worrying, but even he appreciates the effort (and yes, recognize the love motivating it) that went into trying to stop it. "I will attempt to find a new reason to fuss."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Aymeric chokes out a soft laugh, affectionate grip tightening on him for a moment. "See that you do. She will already be upset when she gets home because I am working too much, do not make her have to fret over you being a fool as well."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Am I ever not a fool?" Estinien cannot quite keep a trace of cynicism from his voice, but on the whole, the self-condemnation is said with good humor.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"No. Luckily, we love you anyway." The tension broken, he snorts, and shoves Aymeric's grinning form, unable to keep from smiling back.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Terrible. Go on, you need to eat." He is far from surprised when the knight catches his hand, pulling him after towards the kitchen. Well. No one ever said a late-night snack was <em>bad</em> for worrying, right?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Aymeric de Borel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Ah, our sweetest of men, but with that stubborn and wonderfully dedicated streak. I think, far too much, on him waiting alone in Ishgard through so much of Stormblood and Shadowbringers and it makes me so terribly sad.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>Prompt: Foibles</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>I struggled with this one, so this is simply a brief, silly little musing on how I don’t think his birch syrup thing is as simple as just a sweet tooth.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>Despite the immediate assumption of basically everyone who has ever seen him personalize his cup of tea, Aymeric does not believe he has so simple a foible as a <em>sweet tooth</em>. No, he simply has a varied palate, one that (unusually, among Ishgardians, who as a rule distrust anything spicier than salt) prefers the layered <em>contrast</em> of flavor types. Not sweet alone, but the sweetness of syrup, the tannic bitterness of tea, the smoothness of cream or milk. Even better, his beloved birch syrup is so engaging because it is not simply sweet, but instead, modified with traces of vegetal richness, a mineral brilliance that sparkles on the tongue, all of it in complex, intermingling layers.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Nothing but a simple sweet tooth. Really. It was almost insulting.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>Prompt: Sway</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>While it does not fit particularly anywhere into a story, sometimes a brief moment of happiness is a nice thing to give characters, right?</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p>Aymeric knows Kohanya is genuinely happy tonight by the way she moves. She has always had more natural grace than he is used to assuming of a healer; plenty of the church's chaplains are as much creatures of brute force and harsh action as the lesser knights. As her skills with the rapier have grown, it has only become more obvious, so that when her heart is light, despite her compact height and full figure, she seems to almost float over the ground, as easily swayed into motion as the autumn leaves once were in the breeze. The long dresses and robes tend to assist in that impression, of course, hiding her feet and moving in elegant swirls around ankles and legs.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Following her out into the twilight light of the courtyard, he steps in close, the knight spreading one hand to rest in the small of her back. She turns slightly, looking up at him, pale fingers plucking lightly at the fabric of his overcoat. A quiet laugh bubbles out of the woman, bloody eyes gleaming. "You made it home for dinner, but you can't be patient enough to take the time to change out of armor before tracking me down?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Aymeric can feel heat warming his face and suspects that he is blushing. "I saw you through the window and you seemed so — content. Glad to be home. I could not wait any longer to see you." He lifts a hand, running his fingers through the dark purple strands spilling over her shoulders like the night is starting to spill down across the firmament. A pause at the ends, then with delicate care, he tips her chin up, leaning down to let his mouth find hers, settling into a familiar clasp, warm enough to his heart and soul to chase away the growing icy edges to the breeze.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When he straightens, she smiles, as brilliant as the forgotten summer sun. "I suppose, my shield heart, that so long as you keep making apologies with kisses like that, I will be forced to continue to forgive you when you overwork. But not for coming to the table in armor." Grin still curling her lips, she lays her hands flat against his chest, shoving gently as laughter bubbles up and through them both. "Go. Change. Alone, so I am not tempted to suggest we skip dinner entire for dessert."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Still laughing, Aymeric steps away from her, heading back into the manor as the scholar trails in his wake, chivvying him along with flickering swats of her tail.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>Prompt: Ache</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>It is something of a blessing Aymeric’s life hasn’t visually aged him already, between the years as a knight, the Vault, the assassination attempts, and the irrational way he chooses to sit. Despite Estinien’s evasiveness here, there is no mystery really in his travel habits; post-Nidhogg, his aether reserves and control are much greater and aetheryte travel more practical. He just doesn’t <em>tell</em> anyone that flat out and instead uses it to show up and do things like refill Alberic’s woodpile or sneak off to cuddle Aymeric for a few hours at night and drop off a bit of Garlean Tiger Balm. Look, as someone with chronic low grade pain, it’s wonderful stuff, and I like the idea that one of the ways Estinien shows his love is by quietly noticing things that comfort his partners or is bothering them and finding way to provide for them quietly.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Pain is a constant in the Lord Speaker's life. Old scars and new, the twinge in his gut now when the weather is bad. (In Ishgard, the weather is always bad.) The wearied burn in his back after a long day spent with too much of it leaning over his desk. As a child, his mother would tell him, "Pain lets us know we are alive, and we can only attempt to bear through it with Halone's grace." (A bit of folk wisdom common among Ishgardians, noble and not.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He learned far too young that these words did not merely mean the pains of the body. Those are not so difficult to endure unruffled; while his role now puts him on the field of battle but rarely, long years of training and knighthood have ensured that he will never pass a span of hours without some twinge or scar to remind him of the warrantless war that had for so long seemed unending. The harder part is to wear his charming mask, to smile, bargain, give speeches, calm tempers, endure all the daily emotional wear and tear of leading a city, while in every second, the cavernous emptiness in his chest aches with longing for those he loves who have wandered far from the range of his arms.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The strange solitude of his home, with none in it for now but himself, his cat, and his servants grinds the ache a little deeper each day, each night when he finally retreats to fall into bed when too tired to move, striding past shuttered doors to empty rooms, scattered with the detritus of those who should reside within them. His own bed is vast and cold, relieved only by the slight weight of Snowflake, curled up atop his feet. (And if his mother would be horrified at the fur, he can care no longer; she is some years gone now, and he wearied of trying to impose rules upon a cat.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For once, he has made an early night of it, which means that it is only near onto midnight when he methodically peels himself free of raiment meant for public consumption and retreats to the comfort of soft, worn flannel pants and, as he does more often than he should admit, a soft, old shirt from the stash of Estinien's things always tucked into his drawers, straining slightly against the greater width of his torso. Curling beneath the covers he drifts to sleep counting karakuls, a line of them embroidered around the cuff of each sleeve, tracing one at a time with fingertips and imagining the hand that set the thread into place until sleep makes him soft and still.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He has not slept long when a rush of cold air gusts to ruffle the bedsheets, sending needles of chill down his spine. Rather than a curse and a rush for the window that came undone, he rolls, finds as if delivered by prayer, a tall form relatching the window already. How Estinien achieves his late night visits to his home he is not sure; the Manufactory swears he has not acquired a proper vehicle from them, and in their youth, while he could bear the use of an aetherythe, he invariably complained for hours afterwards about how it made his skin itch. At first, he had been too grateful to question it; now, it has become a sort of strange lucky charm. If he does not question how Estinien comes and goes so peculiarly, he will return.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Foolish superstition, but even the most practical man can be a fool in the face of love. The aching void eases as the dragoon's angular body leans down over the bed, a low laugh like a private caress even before lips graze along his own, the merest hint of all the things he <em>craves</em>. "Well, you have not worked yourself to death yet, if you can still wake at the window opening." Grumbling sleepily, Aymeric props himself up on one arm, watches as Estinien shells his armor, shucks layers beneath and with unerring memory, drags a pair of pants from the drawer of his things. (He would sleep nude if given his druthers, but Aymeric favors clothing and like in many small things, he found that without ever saying a word about his reasons or causes, Estinien simply quietly adjusted his own habits to suit his partner.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The bed is far cozier, far more welcoming with a second body sinking down to lie beside his own, with Estinien's fingers tangling in his hair as he finally takes a proper kiss of greeting. The touch lingers, lips slid against lips in slow motion, soft and weary and tender in a way that needs nothing said to make it any clearer. When it breaks, Aymeric gently traces the dark hollows around Estinien's eyes with one thumb, a quiet sadness at their presence he cannot mask. The dragoon huffs out a breath, looks away, then returns midnight gaze to morning-bright blue. "Stop worrying yourself. I will get better sleep here with you than I would anywhere else."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The lord speaker smiles wistfully but accepts the truth in the words; rarely is there enough time or energy for lovemaking (swiving, Estinien would say, and deny the hint of red that calling it <em>love</em> brings to his ears) on these nights, but in many ways, a few hours of actually restorative sleep, tangled limb to limb until they seem one singular creature, argent and aurum, snow and night, braided and intertwined in a hundred small points of simple connection and touch, is a far greater gift and intimacy. Estinien croons a low note as he presses his nose down into Aymeric's hair, not truly singing, not truly a lullaby, but soothing all the same.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A stronger man, perhaps, could resist the urge to slide back into dreams that may not be so very different from reality. Tonight, at least, Aymeric does not try to be that strong. Let him ease himself in love and warmth and the simple act of holding and being held.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When dawn breaks, Estinien has already fled the roost and Aymeric would wonder if he was there at all, were it not for two things; silver hairs, tangled in his fingers, and lying on the pillow, a squat jar of angled glass and a folded scrap of paper. Opened, the words within are clear; his dragoon learned too late to fully acquire his foster father's exquisite hand but years of being nagged for every report and message home have ensured that, if nothing else, his writing is legible and precise.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"I noticed you were stiff last time I was here. I don't know what's in the stuff and it's pungent, but it's damn good on sore muscles. I guess the Garleans know a bit more than just magitek.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I think of and miss you always."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The last line is pressed hard into the page, as if he had to forcibly summon up the courage to write it openly, even now. Expression softening, despite the disappointment and hollowness of waking alone, Aymeric carefully refolds the note, tucking it into a small cedar box atop of his dresser, full of other such momentos acquired over the years. Few that speak so boldly, though. No doubt, in time, the empty jar of salve will join it, as they both know that the fact it was a gift from Estinien guarantees that he will actually feel obligated to use it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The ache is still there, vibrating in the hollows of his chest, but at least for the moment, it is softened and gentled. He can endure, graceful, a little longer.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>Prompt: Wish</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>I think, despite all that he went through, Aymeric is the sort to have kept faith, if not so much in the church as in Halone herself. He seems the type to clearly separate the divine and the work of the mortals who claim to serve her, and I think he also values his relationship to his adoptive parents very much, and odds are good they were devout. </strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Plus, if anyone would be prone to wishing on a star and deserving it…</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>Ever since he was a child and his mother had taken him out into the garden one summer evening, her long skirts pooling in the grass around her as she knelt and taught him the constellations, Aymeric has been secretly given to the habit of wishing upon the stars that mark Halone’s spears when he espies them in the night. While to be sure no few wishes made were petty, for pleasant weather, desired news, hoped for messages, the majority seemed to fall into three categories.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>First were the things he wishes for in the darkest nights, although he knows they will be forever impossible, things dreamed of but not achieved without the reshaping of all existence. That the parents who raised him had been his in truth, no matter how different he may have looked. That the father who everyone presumed his, who would never publicly claim him, had at least seen him a single time with respect or affection, or anything, <em>anything</em> at all but chilly disappointment. The truth about whatever mysterious woman had borne him. That everyone would simply forget his heritage and judge him, solely and utterly on his own merits, or lack thereof.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Others, he had once thought perhaps as impossible, but had been proven gloriously wrong. These wishes drove him, the ones somehow miraculously achieved. First Estinien’s acknowledgment, then his friendship, his affection, and finally, blessedly, his love. After that, in truth, even the other miracles paled a little, and they were not small things. An Ishgard, no longer at war. The truth about their history known and if not yet truly accepted, beginning to be acknowledged. His beloved Warrior of Light, come to Ishgard to fight at their sides, then soon, to share his heart and their bed. His city, his country, beginning to open minds and borders, come closer to what it should be.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And finally, the things he still is unable to say if they will prove to be the first or the second; the wishes that <em>may</em> yet be or may not. That someday — even mayhaps someday soon — he may be so blessed to have both his beloveds home and safe with him. That in some hazy future time, he can be open about his heart, not have to defend the choices he has made but bear them up proudly and openly. An Eorzea where there is not still the lingering threat of a war with Garlemald that could consume the continent. Even more impossibly and distantly, a future where he could retire home to his spouses and perhaps even his children.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Thus, when he catches sight of the spears across the sky as he walks home through Ishgard’s snow-dusted streets, the moon casting a luminous pale glow, Aymeric ignores the grumbles of the soldiers assigned to his guard today and takes a few seconds to cast up his thanks and his dreams to Halone’s hands, briefly making the goddess’s gesture across his chest before continuing on home.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>Prompt: Avail</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>To me, this one sums up Aymeric terribly well. It is meant, as in the previous two, to reflect on those stretches of time spent alone in Shadowbringers, Estinien off in Garlemald and the Warrior departed to Norvandt. It’s fascinating to me, how I don’t think he would lose faith; he is a practical man and recognizes that people have to face danger. Yet there is no question to me that he would at the same time do everything he can to protect his own, at great risk to himself, if given the chance.</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>One of the first things they teach you is that for a knight to survive, they must avail themselves of any weapon at hand. The man who insists he will only fight with a sword may be honorable, but he is also almost certainly dead. Aymeric learned his lesson well, to have lived so long, and learned the harder companion truth that in war, your comrades are weapons to be wielded as well.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Even those companions that form the shape of your heart.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For years, he has accepted this, watched with weary acceptance and hidden fears when Estinien was sent forth to defend Ishgard. He has even sent him out himself, far too many times. A man is a weapon; he must make use of the weapons he has.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>So he must when his heart stretches to accommodate a second chamber, The warriors of light are unusual weapons, the one dear to him all the more so than the other, but if that is the blade that comes to his hand, he must wield it. And so he did, let Anya and Estinien both suffer and struggle in Ishgard's defense, and tried to wield them with as much kindness as possible and a willingness to lie them down again as soon as he could.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Men (and women) are weapons, but they are more than that. For the sake of his own soul, Aymeric never lets himself forget that. Keeps sight of their vulnerabilities, their warmth, their hearts.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He can only pray that the next hand to fall on those weapons will be as kind, especially when both have been torn from his side to face separate enemies.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>If they are not, well. He is a weapon too and he will wield himself to bring them home if he must.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Kohanya Chelewae</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>My tiny miqo’te scholar, in all her passivity turning to stubbornness under Ishgardian influence. Kohanya to most, Anya to only her very nearest and dearest.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>Prompt: Clinch</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Someday (hah) I will write a little preview series of friendship (okay mostly friendship) fic with the time in late ARR when Anya most hung around Camp Dragonhead and Haurchefant became her first friend she really <em>trusted</em> about emotional things. He’s such an important figure to her, even if not in a romantic sense, and I really do want to do into it more. </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>               ============                  </strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>Wrapping her cloak a bit tighter around herself, even seated atop the vast conference table in Haurchefant's office, closest to the fire, Kohanya shivers against the pervasive Coerthan chill in the air. The camp's commander is not at all bothered in contrast, having gleefully stripped bare to the waist like his recruits before tackling her fellow Scion, Atara, with a warning that he intended to test out how well her grip had healed since Kohanya had tried to fix the old wound that limited her hand's motion. The au ra woman had not even had a chance to protest but did not seem to mind, the two rolling back and forth on the floor in a wrestling clinch, whoops of laughter interspersed with grunts of effort.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Shaking her head in gentle amusement, Kohanya tucks her hands under her upper arms, leaning forward a bit to get a better view. Despite the elezen being damn near twice the gladiator's size, they seem to be well matched, and both are sweating by the time Haurchefant, with a yelp of triumph, manages to intersperse his fingers with the ones of Atara's healed hand, slamming it down onto the floor in a pin. Beaming, he starts to crow, "Ah, so finally I have discovered a method by which I can hold the hand of one of the loveliest ladies with whom I have ev—" His voice is cut off as Atara manages to wrap a leg around his and in some complicated maneuver of physical finesse that is <em>quite</em> beyond the scholar's understanding, she manages to flip things around, ‘til she has the lordling pinned, straddling his chest.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Atara smacks the back of both of Haurchefant's hands lightly against the floor, grinning back in triumph. "<em>Yield</em>, Ser Haurchefant?" He is still laughing as he nods agreement and she rolls off, using her healed hand to help haul the elezen to his feet. Waving the pair over, Kohanya gestures to the victor, curling the fingers of her upturned palm in request. The au ra's hand thumps down into hers and she carefully examines it, flexing the digits and tendons for a moment.  The woman brags happily, "See, loads better'n it was before you messed with it. Guess Haurchefant might be right about something for once."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There is no question it is affectionately meant and as the two fighters dissolve into friendly bickering, Kohanya leans back, hands falling to her lap, the cold forgotten in the warmth of the company of friends.</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>Prompt: Lucubration</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>As before, more digging at that relationship between her and Haurchefant, the very deep bond of love without being in love. They were open enough to talk very bluntly about sex and joke about it without feeling any pressure, and I don’t know if this effectively conveys flirty but in a very loving, safe way but gosh that is Haurchefant in a nutshell to me.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>When dawn breaks over the horizon, three of those that remain will finally cross that vast stone bridge and be allowed entry through the other side. Kohanya remains more than a little unsure what she will find there, what Haurchefant’s much talked of family will actually be like. Normally, she would allow herself in a time of such stress to settle with her projects, embroider something, but their flight from Ul’dah left no time to collect anything personal. Generous to a fault, Haurchefant at least managed to supply them all with a few changes of clothing and sleepwear, but it does not feel <em>hers</em> yet, not in a way where she is comfortable decorating it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hopefully, he is right that she will be able to access her own money via the bank system there. For the moment, Kohanya wraps the quilted silk robe that she was given tighter around her, seated at a small desk by the window as she continues to diagram in her codex. The concept she is working on is, for now, purely theoretical, and the faint glow of Eos’s form provides nearly as much illumination as the actual candle does, guttering weakly in the lowest heights of the holder, wax spilled and pooled into cooling lumps. The Fae spirit sometimes launches herself into flight, hovering in the air near the scholar’s face, and they exchange silent communication each time.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She has no idea the hour but that it is late which means the gentle tap of knuckles against her door is a surprise. Double-checking that her robe envelops her modestly, the miqo’te pushes her hair back, padding to the door on feet still encased in socks. (Coerthas is damnably <em>cold</em>, and bare feet on the stone floors of Camp Dragonhead, even in the warm room over the infirmary she stays in, are downright chilling.) When the heavy wood swings open, she is, somehow, unsurprised to find their host, hands full as he holds two steaming mugs. “How did you know…?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I expected nerves and when I saw the light under the door, I knew you were not asleep. So, I decided to help.” Haurchefant gently lifts the mugs, not wanting to risk spilling them. “May I come in? I assure you, most everyone else is asleep, so I think you are safely protected from the terrible scandal of my presence in your chambers.” Kohanya lets out a soft snort of laughter and leads the way to the two chairs by the small fireplace, settling down in one and taking a mug from the tall man’s hand.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Haurchefant settles into the other chair and considers her through the rising steam, eyes resting a moment on the open tome. His voice is scolding but warm, clearly feeling safe to be pushing her at this point. “It does not look much like you made a serious attempt at sleep, my friend. It will not come if you never try.” Which, damn it all, means he probably noticed that the bed was still made, undisturbed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Smiling back, if wanly, Kohanya takes a careful sip of cocoa; as it ever is at the hands of this maker, the beverage is creamily rich and indulgent, a sensual pleasure eternally at odds with the harsh environment. There is a slight warming spice to it, and after swirling a bit over her tongue, the healer points out, increasingly amused, “There is alcohol in this, isn’t there?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The elezen shrugs, unrepentant. “Yes. It will help you feel sleepy, and I know you don’t fear for your purported virtue around me.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Kohanya stretches one leg out of her robe, poking him with sock-clad toe, taking a few more deep sips before she speaks. “Purported virtue? You wound me.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She is answered with a bold smile as the man drinks in time with her, sprawled in his chair and relaxed and at home in a way that makes her chest ache. She can only imagine what it might feel like, to be even that secure in one’s place in the world. “I merely use your own words against you, my dear.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Another soft laugh and she tilts her head back, surprised to find the mug already all but empty. Blinking down at it, she pouts a little, finally setting it onto the table. Haurchefant stands and comes to her side, having to lean down simply to take her hands in his, squeezing gently. “It will be well. Ishgard is not the warmest or most welcoming, but you are good and kind and generally well behaved,” another squeeze, the words clearly meant as teasing, “So you should not be given so very cold a welcome. Besides, you will at least know some there. You have met the Lord Commander and our Azure Dragoon, and at a minimum that former will be another ally in the city. For what you did to deal with Lady Iceheart alone, you deserve it.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Her expression must betray her exhausted uncertainty, because a moment later, Haurchefant is plucking her from her chair, manhandling her with all the contented ease of a man who knows he can get away with it. Sometimes, her friend is simultaneously the best and worst. Cradled gently in his arms, a height that seems to her to border on dizzying, Haurchefant simply carries her bodily to the bed, dropping her atop the covers. “None of that. You must needs sleep, it will be easier to face if you do.” He tugs the blankets down around her, then back up, looking terribly proud of himself.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She thinks about arguing but the urge comes more from contrariness and her own fear of having to face yet another unending challenge. After dragging a deep breath into her lungs, the slight chill in the air bracing, Kohanya finally smiles, wearied but genuine. “Your point is made. Close my book and blow out the candle on your way out?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Nodding, Haurchefant stops at the desk, closing her tome and extinguishing the candle with a strong huff. The room dims further, down to the last lingering flickers of banked fire, as he pauses in the doorway and promises, “I will come get you early enough for a hearty breakfast. If you do not wake up at my knock, I’ll just send your gladiator friend in to haul you out.” With a last, cheeky grin, he ducks out, the door easing shut behind him, no time for counterarguments given.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Kohanya stares, then carefully shrugs out of her robe to leave her in the nightgown below, finally sliding properly between the covers. Haurchefant was right, the slight heat of a few sips of alcohol in her belly helps make sleep seem closer, and his good natured presence has eased the ever-growing weight that bows her shoulders, at least for long enough to allow for a chance at true sleep.</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>Prompt: Ultracrepidarian</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>When given a word that conveys someone who talks a lot about something they know nothing about, who would come to mind but Emmanellain? Of course, Kohanya is actually quite fond of the youngest Fortemps, flaws and all, and I already had an incident of her coming to consult with him on something he rightly knew not a damn thing about referenced in an <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23177266">earlier, explicit fic of mine</a>. Since there was a chance to expand a little on it and milk it for laughs, why not do so? Takes place in the Heavensward patches, after the Reactor but well before the Final Steps.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>Arguably, she could have abandoned the idea entire when Emmanellain insisted that he had to accompany her to the ‘<em>exclusive boutique’</em> else they turn her away from the door as yet another adventurer with more money than taste. Which she really is not so sure she believes, after all, she flew into the city on dragon back — well, she doesn't remember it that clearly, but she <em>did</em> and that ought to make an impression, even on retailers of… of… adult novelties.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And now the counter is holding a stack of what she is going to politely refer to as <em>art studies</em> she promised to buy Emmanellain if he just <em>keeps his damn mouth shut about why they are here.</em> Which is looking increasingly unlikely as the pair stand in front of a large display of assorted sizes and shapes of black rubber toys, attempting to argue in hissed whispers. She is sure the shopkeep is sneaking stares at the pair of them, an elezen just on the first blush of maturity and an exotic (to them) miqo'te woman, not even coming up to his shoulder.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Emm, I am absolutely not just going to march up to the desk and ask for the largest size they have." Kohanya swings an arm, pointing to a model at the end of the case that looks suspiciously like it was modeled on a roegadyn's clenched fist. "That thing is as wide across as my entire waist! I'd fall flat on my face wearing it, never mind what… what… MY PARTNER DOESN'T NEED SOMETHING THAT BIG."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Emmanellain looks at her skeptically, and says firmly, "I assure you, old girl, all men know, <em>bigger is better</em>."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Kohanya stares at her foster brother for a long moment. "... Emmanellain. How many people have fucked you with a strap on?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Apparently, she was not supposed to be that blunt, judging by the horrified look he is giving her. Or maybe she was supposed to be quieter about it… She's pretty sure she saw the shopkeeper's ears twitch.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Kohanya waits.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And waits.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A long time.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"... Emmanellain. Are you a virgin?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"ABSOLUTELY NOT!" The protest is immediate and sharp, loud enough that the proprietor openly stares at them and snickers. Both of them turn approximately the color of a Dzemael tomato, and the elezen continues in a hissing whisper, "I have had my share of lovers!"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Kohanya considers this. "... So, what, like two? At most?" She turns her head back to the case, considering one of the smallest models, which has a graceful curve to it and a pleasingly not directly copied from real life shape. "Maybe one like this…"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Emmanellain looks horrified. "That's barely bigger than two of your fingers and you're a tiny thing! You are implying your partner is not enough of a man to take it!"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She stares at him some more. "Is this some bizarre Ishgardian cultural ritual? A man has to like taking a big enough cock that it hurts?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He starts sputtering, desperately looking anywhere but her face. "I… well… Look." A swallow and a summoning of courage. "If my presumptions about your likely… co-conspirator in bedroom activities… is accurate, it is reasonable to assume there is a known…. Ability to tolerate… some amount of discomfort."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It is her turn to stare for long moments, then a low hiss, praying they're not overheard, "EMM. Are you… are you asking me if I think the Lord Commander is a <em>masochist</em> when it comes to giant cocks? Nymeia’s <em>grace</em> what sort of rumors are there about him?" Alright, she didn't have to phrase it that way, but damn him, he didn't have to bring it up!</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Emmanellain shifts his weight. Looks at the ceiling. Looks at the case of display models. Turns even redder. "Ah. Well." A long pause, then curiously. "... <em>Is</em> he?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"EMM!"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Er. Sorry. None of my business, I am sure. Still uh… maybe… take… inspiration from…" The youth shifts, not meeting her gaze still, and nods about a quarter of the way into the case, where the models mostly look like they were molded from actual life. "Um. Other… sources…"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Neither of them have the heart to name names. Scowling at the nerve of it, Kohanya leans over the case, finding a model with a series of gentle bumps. "What about…"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Well. Er. Those are intense." She turns, squinting at him, and Emm wilts. "I have heard that they are, I don't fucking KNOW!"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Smirking, Anya reconsiders the options, finding a possible choice with a rather pretty curve and a gentle but definite flare from delicate to relatively thick. "How about this one? Judging from your oh-so-vast experience, brother mine."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A jostle as he elbows her side, then they are both laughing, Emmanellain leaning over the case to consider the indicated model thoughtfully. "That might work. It is ah… realistic… but unlikely to be difficult for you to… wield. Like a sword sized for your frame."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Face starting to flush as she contemplates possibilities, Kohanya lifts her hand, waving the clerk to them. Oh, light, she is really going to do this!</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>Prompt: Shuffle</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>In truth, I don’t think this scene is canon or particularly good, but in the spirit of honest inclusion and a little glimpse at the dynamics of the sandwich… Admittedly it is true I think our grumpy jumpy did not merely abandon everything he knew at the very first opportunity and there are some months of recovery and intermittent travel I look forward to digging into…</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p>Settled cross-legged, mostly atop the mattress (but for one knee, digging down into Estinien’s thigh to remind him to <em>stay put</em>), Kohanya watches intently as Aymeric’s elegant hands shuffle the cards, moving with a familiar grace. A few moments later, he is dealing out cards to each of the three of them. She leans a bit more against Estinien’s leg, enough of her nervousness obvious that he lays a scarred hand on her knee, giving it a brief caress before picking up his own cards.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Fanning them out in her hands, the scholar stares at the designs on the cards’ faces and wondering how she let herself get talked into this. There was nothing <em>wrong</em> with not knowing how to play poker, even if both her Ishgardian paramours had given her flat looks of absolute shock when she explained she had never learned. Oh, a few people in her clan had, but as a child, even if children were included in that sort of games, <em>she</em> would not have been, given her rather tenuous position and rank.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Within a few hands, it becomes increasingly clear that Aymeric’s patient attempts to explain the rules, and explain them again, have been less than effective. Frustrated, Kohanya slumps back until her spine is flat on the bed, head hanging over the edge, and she gives the Lord Speaker a baleful, if inverted, look. “I am increasingly believing that this game would be far more pleasurable for both of you if you deal me out and let me just… nap or read or something.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Oh, I could suggest—” Estinien cuts himself off when they hear the creak of feet on the wooden corridor outside, one of the hospitalers glancing into the room suspiciously on their way past. Clearing his throat at the reminder of the extremely public and precarious nature of flirting from his sickbed, the dragoon does not blush, precisely, but there is a certain flustered aspect to the crease between his brows and the way he scowls now at his cards. “Er.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Tugging lightly at one of her hands to return her to a seated position, Aymeric smiles peacefully. “You are going to find yourself very bored at most Ishgardian functions later in the evenings if you don’t learn to play cards. Even the ladies join in, after all.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>With a weary groan, the scholar considers the deck, then with a single well-placed swipe of her tail, knocks them off the bed and all over the floor, other than the few they are each still holding. The look Aymeric gives her betrays a deeper exasperation than he has been trying to admit to, while Estinien howls with laughter both at her frustration and Aymeric’s expression. “I’ll find a way to entertain myself.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The loud laughter cuts off as Estinien clutches at his ribs for a moment, apparently having pushed a little too hard for his current state, and the cards are forgotten by the scholar as she leans in to lay hands flat against his torso, a suffusion of aether easing away the pain.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Out of the corner of her eye, she notices Aymeric starting to collect the strewn cards and feels a slight twinge of embarrassment. “Er. Let me help…”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A hand waves her off. “I have it.” Then, one of the rarely seen but still impish grins that the knight tries to keep tucked away. “I will take my dues later.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A moment to pause, blinking, then cheeks flush as she starts to laugh, softly. “I’ll hold you to that.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A harsh movement as a leg shoves against hers. “Stop taunting the man still under medical supervision.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>With a smirk, Anya leans in, stealing a fleeting kiss from the dragoon, her eyes flicking to the still open door. “Consider it motivation to recover.”</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>Prompt: Paternal</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>I suppose I could have looked ahead, and perhaps a small temptation was there, but nowhere so great as the chance to create Halonic doctrine and ritual, as someone who grew up in one of the more traditional churches, well. My queer self does dig into those parallels and adores them, because I think the tension between a certain love for it and making comfortable with an identity that doesn’t fit well within the tradition is an all too familiar feeling and I guess you gotta get those queer church feels out <em>somewhere</em>.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>Kohanya wakes to the nagging sensation that she is <em>not as warm as she ought to be</em>. Frowning, she wiggles a little, even before she opens her eyes, establishing that there is still a warm body at her back. She slits eyes of shadowed wine, peering in front of her. Sure enough, even though the light is barely into the first dawning glow, the spot where Estinien was when she fell asleep is empty, the blankets tucked conscientiously close to her form to trap heat. As ever, he most easily indulges in his tender side when not watched directly.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hail rattles against the windowpanes and the miqo’te woman jolts straight upright in the bed, leaning over to shake her other lover. “Aymeric! The weather is bloody god-awful and Estinien ran off again, it’s not safe for him to be out in this, no one should be traveling in it, where could he have—”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She is cut off by a still slightly sleep-burred if authoritative voice, as well as strong but elegant hands pulling her nightgown clad form back beneath the sheets. “Hush, my heart. Our wayward dragoon has merely gone to matins for Saint Joachine’s feast day.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Rolling onto her side to look to Aymeric, his hair sleep-tousled into a wild disarray of curls, Anya gives a slightly blank shake of her head. “Matins? Saint Joachine?” Still discombobulated with worry, it takes a second for it all to align and her stare (and voice) intensify. “… Are you telling me <em>Estinien</em> is not here because he is attending morning Halonic services in a <em>hailstorm</em>?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Aymeric, unconcerned, covers a yawn before pulling her closer to him, one hand stroking over her hair soothingly. “’Tis the saint of fathers. Estinien is hardly devout by the book, but he retains more belief that I think he wishes he did, and his parents were apparently quite sincere in their own worship. He always goes to pray for his father on Joachine’s day, and his mother on Annielle’s. Preferably at the earliest morning services, so as to encounter as few people as possible.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The woman can only blink for a moment, the concept slowly sinking into her mind even as she sinks back into the featherbed when she relaxes. “Oh. Oh. Well then. He will be home?” Aymeric’s immediate nod soothes her further and she settles her head onto his shoulder. “What about you? I know your own parents — the ones who raised you, at least, are gone. Do you go to pray for them?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The softening effect of sleep disappears from the Lord Commander’s features, replaced by quiet grief. “No. It was suggested, as politely as could be managed, that as a man who both ordered the death of the last archbishop and my own father, it would be best for me to not attend this year.” Pale blue eyes flicker away, then back again, all he can do to hide the moment of pain. “’Tis fair enough, at least in terms of how it is likely to be perceived. Those who wish to believe ill might consider it particularly callous of me, after all. Next year, perhaps, but my devotions this year must needs be private.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Running fingers down the length of his arm, Anya finds Aymeric’s hand, clasping it tightly in her own as she lifts her head enough to kiss his chin, soft and loving. “I am sorry, my shield heart. You know as well as I do that there was no other choice and you should not be judged thus.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Pulling their linked hands to his mouth, Aymeric kisses her knuckles softly. “I do know, but it is the nature of people. I can live through it and I am hardly banned from services entire, merely today when the visuals might be unfavorable.” He sets her hand down, smile gentle, already trying to ease his own sting any way he can. “Do you have someone to offer prayers for?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Giving a soft shake of her head, the miqo’te smiles wryly. “No, as I have no doubt your little information gatherers told you, I know nothing of my own father. Perhaps when it comes time for mothers, however…” A slight shift, smile faltering. “I would not object to accompanying you, if you would be willing to have me.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lips against her knuckles again and Aymeric swears softly, “I am always proud of your company. I will be happy to go and offer Halone prayers for my mother and yours, when that day comes.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p>
  
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>Prompt: Muster</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>I shall not call this canon, although it is entirely possible; peafowl are notoriously fond of free-ranging when kept as poultry and also have a notoriously distinct cry. However, mostly, I wanted to joke about mustering to deal with a muster because I am a dork like that.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>Groaning, Kohanya pulled a second down pillow over the top of her head, trying to fully muffle the incessant <em>screeching </em>from outside. Who had even known that peacocks could make such a Twelve-forsaken sound? The first time one had managed to fly up into the courtyard and started screeching territorially, she had thought someone was being murdered.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As terrible as the thought is, at least a murder would have been over quickly. Ever since some idiotic or hungry bastard had cut the wire mesh on the enclosure of peacocks the Firmament kept to provide feathers to the crafters, it had become a recurring problem. They had spread themselves wide through the city and while those willing to hunt one for feathers or food had thinned the numbers a little, the birds were larger and more aggressive than your average Brumeling would want to take on without a real weapon. As such, the peafowl remained a significant threat to getting sleep.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Slitting one eye open, she considers the rest of the bed in the narrow gap between the pillows. Sensible, patient <em>morning person </em>Aymeric has already given up on sleep and left, no doubt to get an early start on work. Just as well, because he would no doubt talk her into a more sensible (and slower) solution. Right now, she does <em>not </em>feel inclined to be sensible.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As such, Anya's next move is to press one hand flat against the small of the bare back in front of her and shoving. "Estinien? Are you awake?" (If he is not, he's damn well going to be, and she has no shame about it.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Shoulders tense in offense and she grins, even as the dragoon rumbles bitterly, "I am attempting <em>not</em> to be."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Wiggling until she can mold to his back and press lips to a shoulder, Anya shamelessly pitches her voice down into pleading tones. "I can't sleep… You can single handedly take on a dragon, surely you can catch one or two peafowl, right?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A stiffening and pause, then Estinien rolls onto his back, hair falling in tangles, head turned to glower at her directly. "You wish to set the former Azure Dragoon to hunting <em>poultry</em> for you. That is what you think of me?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lowering her eyelids slightly so her lashes shade her eyes, Warrior of Light or not, she pouts. "That the Azure Dragoon and a shepherd are both well suited to that task? Yes, I do. Please? I will even sweeten the request; bring me the feathers and I will design something to wear with them. Something I can only wear at home."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The glower continues while she is speaking, but she catches the softening, weakening, and the spark of interest in his eyes. Already anticipating the return of peace and quiet, she is surprised when his mouth curls up, flashing teeth wickedly in a smirk. "For you <em>and</em> Aymeric. Without warning him. Because I am going to get to tell our <em>Lord</em> to his face that he's peacocking when he'll have no way to argue."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Staring in mild horror, Anya finally groans and rolls onto her back, unconsciously mirroring her partner's position. "Fine. Even if you are a truly wicked monster, I suppose I have accepted your nature a long time ago."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Now that he has won — or that the negotiations have been concluded in a draw, rather than the miqo'te simply getting her way — Estinien is happy to roll and briefly prop himself above her, stealing a quick kiss. "You have, and I have no intention of letting either of you change your mind." Before she can shove again or come back with another remark, he smirks and rolls back the other way and out of bed and, quickly, the bedroom.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Anya stares at the ceiling and waits. A few minutes later, the sound of territorial screeching becomes offended avian wailing and increasingly loud, inappropriate cursing in Estinien's rough voice. Several planters — she assumes — are knocked over judging by the clattering and banging sounds, then a door slam open. Aymeric's voice carries clearly, even when it is near to cracking with confused shock. "Estinien! What are you doing?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The rest of the conversation is quieter enough that she can no longer make out distinct words, but the damned birds grow quieter too, and, after a long enough wait, silent. Sighing in blissful relief, she cocoons herself back into the blankets, with every intent to sleep a few bells more. After all, she has earned it, mustering the greatest of Ishgard's defenders… against a muster of peacocks. Hard work, even for a Warrior of Light.</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>Prompt: Nonagenarian</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Until I was able to knock a few things loose with prompt from this, Anya had been very firmly clear that Ardbert was too sore a point to talk about; the connection for her was definitely the strongest bond formed on the First and the whole thing, well…</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When she lies in her room in the Pendants, Kohanya can always swear she feels the weight of history, crushing down upon her. It may be a ridiculous idea; she knows there is not even a full century to most of the buildings and rooms. Ishgard has over a thousand of years of war and suffering and struggle yet being there lies upon her as gracefully as a handknit shawl curls around her shoulders. Here, she feels stiff, as if bound in starched and ironed edges, a late arrival when she was expected and needed so long ago.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The years drape on her like layers of petticoats when the Exarch watches and speaks to her, shaded in the heavy overhang of his hood, hiding all but the hauntingly familiar shape of lips. A century of waiting to call her, of grasping and grabbing the wrong people. Of leaving her friends empty shells, of nearly costing her life to Zenos, or Ta's. Of his actions putting those dearest to her at risk, as Estinien fled in pursuit of the Garlean prince after her rescue. She is still bitter at him, a constant low seethe of resentment that lingers in her belly like nausea, but at the same time…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She sees how the people react to him here. Warm, welcoming. They feel safe. It is hard to correlate, against what she thinks she once knew, yet it almost, almost makes sense. 'Tis true he has been gracious and welcoming, with small, charming flashes of humor. She only wishes he was honest and open as well. Perhaps she is spoiled by honest politicians, Kohanya thinks, rolling over onto her left side to face out into the room, towards the shutters, still standing open to the night air. The cause of that, too, lingers in her, the hollow ache in her gut beneath the resentment, the way she feels she can feel the shape of her bones, beneath the skin, as if they radiate a constant, low-grade heat. The sensation stings, itches, as if swarms of gnats or mosquitos had slipped within her flesh to bite and feast.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She is sure it will fade, eventually.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Hey."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Her body does not move, but her eyes shift, finding the translucent form leaning against the wall by the dresser. In another time, having her own personal ghost of a former — she does not want to call him an enemy, really, given how it all ended — foe? as her own personal companion might have been distressing. After everything else on the First, she has instead found his presence oddly soothing, in much the same way that merely being near Atara can calm something in her, or how Ysayle and Minifilia sang to her heart of family of familiarity and kindness, rather than scorn and distaste.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Kohanya makes a soft sound of acknowledgement, awaiting his follow up.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Brilliantly blue eyes meet hers, just enough lighter than Haurchefant's to be distinct, far too dark for Aymeric, far too bright for Estinien. Too kind for Zenos. Blue and blue and blue again, she sometimes thinks she is drowned by blue eyes.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"You're worrying instead of sleeping, yeah?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sighing, the scholar scrubs a hand over her own eyes, blood at night, spilled wine on the floor. "Yeah. Familiar with it?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>His expression is not a smile, precisely, but there is something a little softer, and a little gentler in it, considering her. "From my friends. I was never much of one for philosophical musing in the dark. If that's what it is, and not that you miss them?" He puts a little emphasis on the last word; the second night after Lakeland, with the light fresher and hotter in her bones, too raw and scraped for sleep still, she had talked to him for long hours, more for having someone <em>safe</em> to spill secrets too, for who else would see him, who could he tell? If a ghost wanted to judge her lovers, it could not harm her, but he had not, simply looked wistful for a long time and told her he wished he'd had the courage to acknowledge things he had once known but never spoken about, and that he was glad she had.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It was surprisingly <em>kind</em>, from a wraith who had been wandering alone as long as this tower had existed here. "No. I mean, yes, always, but right now, just over-thinking."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Well," his voice is still so soft and welcoming and she wonders again, who he was in life that he is so open to her now. It is not just desperation for contact; she's sure, somehow, that he feels that warmth and draw too, the way she finds it a little easier to relax with him there. "I know a solution to that. Close your eyes."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Uncertain but willing to try, Kohanya lets her lids drift down over her eyes, closing them away. She can't hear any movement but she is sure, somehow, that Ardbert has come closer, stepped next to the bed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When he starts to sing, they fly open again, the tune soft and low. A lullaby. When he catches her gaze he stops and laughs. "You won't fall asleep if you do that. This used to work for a dear friend of mine, just keep them closed and focus on the sound." Nodding mutely, feeling almost compelled, Kohanya rests her eyes once more, wondering which of the other warriors of his time he did this for.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As the melody starts to trickle into her feline ears, the thought falls away, and she loses herself in the rhythm and words, until sleep is carried by the tune and washes her away.</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>Prompt: Crux</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>An early attempt to work through some feelings about Shadowbringers and 5.3 on a general philosophical level. Ironically, this was day 1, and day 30, which will be the very last snippet in this collection, is the one that came back to it and actually said what I wanted to.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Between and the past and the future, the present is a fulcrum. The crux of the matter. There are two ways she could be looking; back to the past, to what has been and can never be exactly the same again, and forward to the future, to the unknown. Elidibus — Emet-Selch too, for all he was kinder about it — wanted her to believe that the past could be the future, that time would turn itself into an endless circle if she would only let them do as they said was needed. <em>Rejoining</em>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Yet all she can think is that if you know every step on the road, you could never be surprised with the joys of discoveries ahead. There is so much she wants to see, that would not be there if she turned to the past. Alphinaud and Alisaie, finally coming into their own, for starters. (Finally being taller than her, which is generally a very easy feat for any Spoken not of Lalafellian descent!) What Ishgard will become in the future, freed of lies. If Lyse and Hien will bring some sense of peace back to their war-torn lands now that they are free, what can become of their people. The personal things, too… If Aymeric really was going to inherit Thordan's eyebrows, like Ta keeps telling Estinien when she wanted to really piss him off. (How long it would take either of them to admit that they did not <em>hate</em> each other, it was worse, they were <em>siblings.</em>)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>All these things would only exist if she chose the path that was new and bright, as frightening as hope. All of these things could not exist if she wove the world back into an orb, let all converge from once to one. Maybe it is selfish, but she would rather her future held forever the home she was making than one she had chose to leave behind.</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>Prompt: Where the Heart Is</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>I don’t know if it would be exactly like this, as I reserve the right to change my mind, but there’s no question, once everyone was safely back on the First, Anya would have been in Ishgard as fast as could be managed and want nothing but to stay there as long as she is allowed.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>It is snowing in Ishgard when she materializes at the aetheryte, and all she can be is thrilled. Cold and icy, the wind howling and whipping her hair in a froth and all she can do is sing in her heart as she reaches for the smaller ley lines of aether that link the internal network of the city, find the beacon that hums in the tune of her own heartbeats.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She almost stumbles through the drifts in the garden, careless, and it does naught but leave her breathless with laughter as she ducks within the door. Boots are stripped and abandoned even as someone is hurrying to find who came and slipped in within knocking and she spies Isidore, wide-eyed with recognition, before he waves and turns to talk to someone else just beyond the line of sight. Likely someone with fleet feet, gone to fetch home their Lord and employer at her return.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Her stocking-clad feet slide a bit on the stone and Isidore looks back, smiling. “Welcome home, my lady. Sidonie will fetch the Lord home, and Ser Estinien is upstairs, I believe.” Beaming a warm smile of thanks, she darts for the staircase, hearing the warm, low rumble of his age-rasped laughter in her wake as she considers the stairs, then draws on training, launching herself up them in two judicious leaps. (Equally judicious, she ignores the memory of having once given grief to the one she seeks for doing precisely that series of jumps before, with her in his arms.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She pauses where the halls split, glancing down the one ever familiar now to her own feet. Four doors, one they never open, and three to examine for signs of life. True to form, one door is ajar (to deliberately allow entrance to the cat, not that he admits to it ever), to the space that formally is the abode only of the bedrock and foundation of their lives. Aymeric’s.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sure enough, the former Azure Dragoon in in an absolute consuming sprawl on the lounge, carefully not moving because Snowflake’s equally scruffy form is draped over his thighs, the aged tomcat purring loud enough to be heard even at a distance and currently leaking a trail of feline drool as Estinien scratches behind his ears. The man, although not the cat, startles at the sound of the door opening all the way, the slightest hint of sheepishness allowed to tinge his expression as he attempts to drape his arm on the back of the chaise as if he hasn't been caught indulging Aymeric's ‘dreadful beast’.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>His eyes go wide and she knows that her presence has sunk in, that it <em>is</em> her, not a servant or the lord returned, and there is a restrained but still gleeful whoop as poor Snowflake is tumbled to the floor and Estinien crosses the fulms to the door in a bare few strides, scooping her up to swing her in a circle in his arms, face breaking into one of the widest smiles she’s yet seen on him. “It is done?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Laughter rings from her like bells and secure that he would never let her fall, she cups the sharp planes of his face in her hands, blissful tears starting to paint her cheeks as she kisses him, hard and deep, like a woman in the desert at her first oasis. “It is done, we are all home safe, Estinien, all of us. We are <em>home</em>. I am home, or I will be as soon as you both are here to hold me.” With the care of a man handling a blown glass ornament, the dragoon sets her on her feet, eyes locked on her face, only to crush her closer again, bury her face in against his chest as he clutches at her.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She can smell cool air and woods, not to mention the faint trace of Aymeric’s favored warmly spice scented soap. Contented smile warming her features, Anya is glad to simply lean to him for a long while, neither feeling the need for words in the wake of simple presence. Her tears soak into his shirt, strong fingers tracing a slow trail up and down her spine. They wait long enough, simply drinking in the quiet security of one another’s nearness, for the slam of a door downstairs, followed by the clang of formal metal-trimmed boots over the floor at a running pace.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>With a laugh that is as much a choked sob of sheer emotion, Anya turns in Estinien’s grip, his hands falling to girdle her waist like a finger bone corset as they both face the door, breath held in anticipation. When Aymeric breaches the doorway, chest heaving with hard breaths, she is not entirely sure if she tosses herself at him or if Estinien boosts her. Strong arms wrap around her again and if she was sobbing before, she is all but wailing now, not from grief, but in pure, unadulterated relief.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Lord Speaker’s hands are tangled in her hair and he tilts her head up, kissing tears away from her cheeks, touch soft and devout. Estinien closes in to join them, one hand flattened against her back, one reaching to start to unhook and unfasten Aymeric’s finery as he welcomes their lover home as well. “Let us get rid of this so you can hold her properly. ‘Tis done, the Scions are home, which means for at least a little while, ‘til the world calls again, she is ours.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She makes another of those choked laughs, starting to regain a little control over the ebullient swell of emotion as she helps in their Lord’s reduction to household trews and shirt. Between it all, stolen kisses pepper each set of lips from each, a chaotic melody of love and adoration that may not be traditional but sends them soaring to heights all the same. Finally, the trio collapses onto the chaise, limbs intertwined in a tangle of comfort and security. Aymeric’s hand cradles the back of her head, tilting it up so he can kiss her once more, Estinien somehow managing with those long dragoon’s legs to be both sprawled across the knight’s lap and having arms wrapped around her at once. “Full glad we are, beloved, to have our heart make this truly home again.” An arm curled over each neck, she pulls them both nearer, as if she could meld their bodies within her own, and drinks and drinks and drinks of this moment, as pure and clear as fresh snow melt and as quenching to the droughts of her soul.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Ardbert</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>As I said, Ardbert was a hard point; there was very intense feelings there and my WoL wasn’t even sure she wanted to talk about him. To find out he had his own things to say was a lovely surprise, and that his voice came to me quite comfortably.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Prompt: Fade</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Angst-minded creature that I am, at this word I could only think of how the light energy would have worn down and away at the one holding it, and I knew instantly who else was watching it and the only other one really knowing…</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p>She lays the pen down with such absolute delicacy that it only highlights how very afraid she must be that at any moment her form will warp beneath her. An excessive fear, perhaps; when they brought her back to her room, unconscious and still as marble, he had thought it all ended, but after a bell passed while she rested in a shell of the dark knight’s aether, tainted by her opposite measure and tended by Ryne’s unique powers, she woke again, showed enough signs of life and stability that the Scions, in time, scattered to make plans and prepare, leaving her alone. Well, as alone as he has ever let her be, here on Norvandt.</p><p> </p><p>At first, Ardbert had followed her from surprise at recognizing someone. Later, after they had begun to speak often, it fast became friendship, kinship, some strange symmetry where they fell into words and routines as easily as breath comes and goes between parted lips. It is nothing either of them have felt before, something uniquely different. He recognizes the distance in her eyes, that she has lost track of the flow of time, been drawn into the stillness of light and stagnation. “Anya? You need to fold your letters.” He has read them, as she writes; it would be hard not to and between them, there is no need to keep secrets, even those of words of devotion and regret sent to the twin flames of her heart.</p><p> </p><p>It is the gentlest reminder, almost not enough, and he reaches out one hand to try and touch the fall of her hair, currently a streaky mess of shades that range from snowfall to deepest sunset purple, although there is the disconcerting sense that whenever he looks away, the whole has paled more by the time his gaze returns. He can feel the faintest tingle against his fingers, a static charge, and it is enough that she startles. “I… Sorry.” Returned to a thin tether of reality, she starts to fold the papers. When each is neatly set and sealed, she picks up the pen again, labeling the name on each with exquisite care.</p><p> </p><p>When she finishes, luminous tears trail down her cheeks, leaving streaks aglow until the aether dissipates. He has to swallow to see it, spirit or not; after so long wandering the light-blasted ruins, he has seen more transformations to sin eater than he can remember. None have been this slow, nor this horrifying. She has always been pale, but now streaks of stiffened flesh hued as chalk crackle out from her joints, more gleaming like polished stone in wide lines long her spine, cracking her open from within, the light inside her burning its way free.</p><p> </p><p>She is fading away, not just in body, but in mind, forgetful, hazed. Meals go uneaten, her familiar unsummoned, drinks left to cool on tabletops. He pulls her back to herself when she goes absent, again and again, quiet words only she hears or the spark of brushed aether. “Feo Ul will be able to deliver these to your loved ones?”</p><p> </p><p>“So they assure me, and they have brought messages back and forth many times. I can only have faith that the conditions for reading them is passed on. Perhaps it is not impossible they will not need to be opened.”</p><p> </p><p>He studies her for a moment and finds some ability to smile at how she is still trying for optimism, even if he can see in the deep weariness of how she moves, how she speaks, that it is no longer believed. “Impossible things happen sometimes. Whatever happens, I will be there to see it.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <strong>&lt;&lt;∞&gt;&gt;</strong>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Prompt: Splinter</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>====Notes===</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>A core theme for me that came out of 5.0+ even if it was not the one meant shows here. Of course, I took the unfair chance to draw reference to some of the other Warriors of Light I know and am terribly fond of; hopefully their owning authors will forgive the presumption at their extremely vague and brief presence. In the end, what I love most is all of you, shining in your own unique ways.</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>(I recently replayed this and realized I reversed the order of these two things, but you know what? I like it this way, so I don't care, hah.)</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>============</strong>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p>Just a few minutes — moments even — before it had seemed hopeful. Her spells woven and singing through the air, amidst a company of heroes summoned from beyond, each one achingly familiar somewhere deep below his breastbone.</p><p> </p><p>A galdjent woman accompanied by egis and ancient magics, face determined.</p><p> </p><p>Two humes amidst a whirl of fire and ice, the light reflecting off skin pale and ruddy warm, hair of deep blue and rich brown.</p><p> </p><p>Even smaller than the woman he walks besides, a drahn woman with golden skin and hair like starlight, her magic a mirror of Anya’s as they bolster and support their peers.</p><p> </p><p>Another drahn, stern faced and looming over the rest, white scales gleaming as he dove, lance in hand.</p><p> </p><p>A tall blonde hume with a gunblade, who steps in to take the blows that Atara cannot, protecting them all.</p><p> </p><p>A rain of arrows from a mystel woman with long coppery waves and a scarred neck.</p><p> </p><p>A viis, wielding rapier and magics, dashing and capped in short, cropped blond locks.</p><p> </p><p>He knew them and he did not. Ardbert feels strangeness deep within as he comes to a realization.</p><p> </p><p>Every crystal, every gem, is merely a splinter of a larger whole, but they are beautiful because they have been sundered and allowed to shine.</p><p> </p><p>If his time to shine is done, he will help her keep hers, as she is, not locked away within someone else, no matter they might be more whole.</p><p> </p><p>Moving to stand beside her form, fallen and seemingly shattered, Ardbert looks down at Kohanya, at the home and warmth that brought him back to himself.</p><p> </p><p>“If you had the strength to take another step, could you do it?”</p><p> </p><p>He already is certain she will say yes and something in him starts to soar free, the untethered certainty of joy.</p><p> </p><p>Ardbert knows why he lingered.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>As always, want to talk and hang out with other people who love FFXIV fic, whether it be writing it or reading it? Please stop by <a href="https://discord.gg/enabling-debauched-xivfic">The Bookclub</a> and join us!</p>
<p>Want to bug me specifically? My various social media (including my tumblr and the rough versions of my FFXIVWrites, almost all related to this fic) can be found via <a href="https://nightmist.carrd.co">my carrd</a>.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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